Monthly Archives: February 2012

The Age of Obama has been a disaster in more ways than anyone has time to chronicle. One of the worst consequences of Obama’s economic policies is the stunting of prospects for an entire generation of young Americans. The simplest and most brutal evidence of this phenomenon are the 25 million adult Americans who are forced to live with their parents–among young men, nearly 20% of those between 25 and »

We now resume our long running series testifying to the singular strengths of Chris Christie as a presence on the national scene. Ambushed by Washington Post opinion writer/editorial board member Jonathan Capehart regarding his veto of a gay marriage bill in New Jersey, Christie, shall we say, more than held his own on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. According to Noel Sheppard, Christie smacked him down. According to me, Christie showed Capehart »

President Obama gave a speech on energy today, evidently in response to rising gasoline prices. As always on this topic, his claims were mostly deceitful. He dragged out the long-exploded canard that America can’t drill its way to lower gas prices, since we have “have only 2% of the world’s oil reserves.” We and others have written about this many times, as has the Congressional Research Service, so Obama and »

That was the title of my lecture this morning for the Hillsdale College cruise, while it was sailing south from Rio. But fortuitously I was able to snap the photo below that makes my point: an offshore oil drilling ship—one of three we sailed past early this morning, all operating offshore from Rio. Clearly Brazil isn’t frightened of the risk to its main beach resort and second-largest city, nor will »

I wrote yesterday that “Maybe you have to be Greece before most people get seriously concerned about sovereign debt.” Oops. My mistake. It turns out that the United States is already, by at least one basic measure, broker than Greece. This chart, from the Senate Budget Committee, shows how much citizens of various countries owe, on a per capita basis, in national government debt. The average American owes more than »

Dwight Eisenhower was one of the greatest Americans of the twentieth century. As Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, he led the United States to victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. As president of the United States, he presided over a period of normalcy and peace with many accomplishments that benefited the country. A memorial is to be erected on the mall in Washington, DC, in his honor. »

Maybe you have to be Greece before most people get seriously concerned about sovereign debt. Of all the good reasons to evict Barack Obama from the presidency in November, the most fundamental is that he is spending our country into financial ruin. I don’t think most Americans understand how much federal spending and debt have risen during the Obama administration (and even before it, when Democrats took control of Congress »

Scott notes below that today is George Washington’s birthday, but omits to mention that it is also — drum roll please — Scott Johnson’s birthday! I know it’s cool of Coolidge to be the only president born on the 4th of July, but it’s really cool to share a birthday with George Washington. And since we’re celebrating great men, I’ll just second Scott’s notice of the first George W. (since »

Back in 2007 Paul Mirengoff wrote here about one of the Washington Post stories inspired by former CIA officer (and former Democratic Senate committee staffer) John Kiriakou. Last month John Hinderaker commented here on Kiriakou’s indictment for leaking classified information. His comments having been cleared by the CIA Publication Review Board, former CIA case officer Ishmael Jones writes on the proceedings against Kiriakou: On January 23, former CIA employee John »

I’m still getting the hang of Twitter (my latest contribution: “Carnivale in Brazil is like the Tournament of Roses Parade on LSD”), but for now I think the best Twitter feed around—and reason enough to join or follow—is the feed that supposedly comprises elevator gossip and quips from the hallowed halls of Goldman Sachs (featuring Goldman CEO Lloyd Bankfein in the photo thumbnail): GS Elevator Gossip @GSElevator Now that I have »

Today is the anniversary of the birth of George Washington. Of all the great men of the revolutionary era to whom we owe our freedom, Washington’s greatness was the rarest and the most needed. At this remove in time, it is also the hardest to comprehend. Take, for example, Washington’s contribution to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington’s mere presence lent the undertaking and its handiwork the legitimacy that resulted »

We are remiss in not having written about the Peter Gleick scandal. Gleick is a founder of the liberal Pacific Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is an expert on water resources, not climate. Like many left-wingers in irrelevant fields of study, he has irrationally strong feelings about global warming. So, as Gleick has now admitted, he obtained documents from the Heartland Institute under false »

Here in Minnesota, an overwhelming majority of voters are disgusted with the state’s lax voting laws. Polls indicate that a large majority support a voter identification requirement. Our legislature–in Republican hands after the 2010 election–passed a voter ID law, but it was vetoed by Democratic Governor Mark Dayton. So the legislature is now working on a proposed amendment to the Minnesota Constitution that in all likelihood will be on the »

If, like me, you have long wondered why many thousands of Palestinians continue to live in “refugee camps” more than sixty years after the events that ostensibly made them refugees, Daniel Pipes explains: The origins of this unique case, notes Nitza Nachmias of Tel Aviv University, go back to Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations Security Council’s mediator. Referring to those Arabs who fled the British mandate of Palestine, he »

The Gallup organization reported today that its mid-February survey found unemployment increasing to 9%: The U.S. unemployment rate, as measured by Gallup without seasonal adjustment, is 9.0% in mid-February, up from 8.6% for January. The mid-month reading normally reflects what the U.S. government reports for the entire month, and is up from 8.3% in mid-January. That is a very sharp jump, probably due in part to seasonal factors, and it »

In his memoir Surrender Is Not An Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad, John Bolton recalls his appointment as assistant secretary for International Organization Affairs by President Bush (I) following the 1988 election. The position made him responsible for overseeing the entire UN system. It was a dirty job, but someone had to do it, and no one better than John Bolton. In early 1989, Bolton writes, »

So it’s Carnivale week here in Rio, and your intrepid Power Line Southern Command bureau chief decided to dress up in the scariest festival costume imaginable—American tourist—and take in the street scene last night. My keen journalistic conclusion: Carnivale is a cross between Pasadena’s Doo-Dah parade and the drums and space segment of a Grateful Dead concert, with a dash of the Stanford marching band thrown in just for some »